


Doll House

by glitterpop



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Dark!Hiro, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Blood, Psychological Horror, Slow Build, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitterpop/pseuds/glitterpop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tadashi wakes up alone in a house that he can't leave, that he doesn't remember ever being outside of. Slowly losing his mind from the isolation, he finds a book that could help him make his own friend</p><p>All he has to do is give some blood</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doll House

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so first of all, [I got the inspiration for this story from this short film; it's only five minutes so please watch it!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDXOioU_OKM)
> 
> This is another horror story, but not like my last one. There isn't as much body horror in it, little at all in fact, and it more relies on suspense rather than anything else. It's a slow build until the end, but I really hope you guys like this! I worked really, really hard on it
> 
> Again, like last time, if you feel there should be any tags that I missed please let me know!!

The first thing Tadashi knows of life is the room he wakes up in.

He’s only vaguely aware that this maybe should concern him. He remembers that he is called Tadashi, and he remembers what he looks like, but that’s it. Every time he tries to think of something from before he woke up, though, his head starts to pound, making him feel like he would throw up. He quickly decided to wonder about his supposed past another time.

Instead he looks around the room he woke up in. It turns out to be a small bedroom; the bed is the largest piece of furniture in the room, taking up most of the space. It swallows even his tall frame. There’s a desk underneath a high placed window. A chest sits at the end of the bed, and there are two doors placed at the other ends of the room. The floors are made of wood.

There aren’t any light fixtures. There’s only a candle that sits on the desk.

Exploring the room doesn’t yield much information. The only things in the chest are clothes and more candles. When he stands on the desk and looks out the window, all he sees are trees. There isn’t much of a clearing between what he supposes is the house he’s in and the forest beyond. He can see the sun in the sky, right above him; it must just be reaching noon.

One of the doors leads to a small bathroom, nothing in it but a small tub, a toilet, and a sink. There’s a tiny mirror above the sink where he can see his reflection. There’s nothing new that awaits him in his reflection; thick, dark hair and dark eyes, shadows under them. He knows the sight all too well. It doesn’t jog any memories, so he leaves the room.

The other door leads out into the rest of the house. It’s small, like the room he woke up in, but these rooms open to each other. There’s a kitchen, nothing in it but a small table and a fridge. He looks inside and finds basic things in it; bread, milk, cheese, fruits and vegetables. There’s no light in the fridge when he opens it, but it’s cold on the inside. It looks like there’s electricity at least.

Walking a few feet to the left led him to what he assumed to be a living area. There was a shabby rug on the floor, and a wooden chair sat underneath another window, also high up in the wall. Standing on the chair, the view out the window offers him the same view he had had in the bedroom. There was another small chest in the corner, in it nothing but books. He looked up and saw two more doors waiting for him.

The first door led to what Tadashi could only describe as a sewing room. It was tightly packed; shelves of fabric and baskets of yarn took up the walls and floors. There was another desk, this one with nothing on it but a sewing machine. Poking through the drawers he found different odds and ends, things like buttons and marbles and lengths of wire. There were boxes of sewing needles tucked away, boxes of pretty glass eyes. There was a cabinet full of nothing but cotton stuffing.

The second door he opened led to a room that was pitch black on the inside. The light that reached into the room, coming from behind him, barely went a few feet in before it stopped. Tadashi bit his lip; he wondered what could possibly be in there that there wasn’t even a window. Or maybe there was a window, and something was just blocking it. He hoped that that was the case.

He didn’t want to go in, but what choice did he have?

He ran back to the first room and grabbed the candle off the desk. Rifling through the chest by the bed produced matches. He quickly ripped a few out to light the candle; it took him a few tries, the first few breaking in his shaking hands, but he finally got it lit with a few mumbled curses. He walked slowly back to the dark room, trying not to be scared, unable to help himself, determined to go through the door regardless.

It turned out to be a library, which was a harmless room, but also much larger than the rest of what he had seen. There were shelves and shelves, all tightly packed with books, all seeming to reach the ceiling. Walking around, he counted at least twelve different shelves, which seemed to be a whole lot more than what a house this small should need. He was also shown that there was indeed no window in this room, nothing but empty walls. He wondered briefly at the lack of decoration in this house, but decided that it was a non-issue.

There weren’t any more doors in this room. There weren’t any light fixtures in this room either. No lamps, no ceiling lights, not even a candle like the one he was holding. He realized that none of the rooms had lights in them. Was he supposed to just walk around with the candle? Why wouldn’t there be lights? The fridge in the kitchen was cold, which told him that there was electricity that could power a lamp or two.

It wasn’t until Tadashi stepped out of the library that he realized that he hadn’t seen a door that led outside at all.

 _That’s not possible,_ he thought, feeling calmer than maybe he ought to have been feeling. He was positive that he was right though, that there was no way that there wasn’t a door to go outside. Every house had a door like that, hell, most houses had multiple doors like that. He wasn’t quite sure how he knew that, to be honest, but he was very certain of this. Checking the house again though, more thoroughly, produced the same results though. There wasn’t any way out.

Tadashi may have begun to panic at this point.

He rushed back to the bedroom, hopped onto the desk and promptly began to slam his fists into the window.

“Hey!” he screamed as loud as he could. “Hey! Is anyone out there? Please!” No one replied, but he wasn’t sure if he had been expecting anyone to in the first place.

His knuckles ached and stung from being pounded into the glass, and he realized, somewhat dazed, that he had started leaving streaks of blood on the glass. The window refused to break however. He slowly climbed off the desk, breath coming in quick gasps, and rushed to the living area. He opened the chest in there and took out the heaviest book he could find.

Going back to the bedroom he once again climbed onto the desk, where he promptly began to try to break the window with the book. Still nothing happened though. No matter how hard he hit it, the glass refused to even crack.

He repeated the process with the other two windows in the house, tearing apart his knuckles and practically destroying the book he held. It was pointless, he finally accepted after what felt like hours of trying. Nothing he did was even making a dent, a fracture, not even a scratch. The windows wouldn’t break no matter what he did.

Wherever he was, he was trapped.

He dropped the book where he stood and let that truth sink into his skin. He let it wrap around his bones as he trudged back to the bed he had woken in. He let the words imprint themselves onto his brain as he curled into a ball.

 _I’m trapped here,_ he repeated to himself over and over, confused and heartsick as to why, as he cried himself back to sleep.

-

Tadashi had learned a few things about the situation after a few days, or what he figured was a few days. He learned that he had running water, so taking baths and going to the bathroom was easy enough. He learned, even though the fridge stayed cold and the sewing machine worked, that there wasn’t any electricity. He had checked and saw that neither appliance was hooked up to anything. He wasn’t sure how they were working, but they were.

He learned that, no matter what, almost every supply he used was replaced while he slept. Food was always in the fridge to replace was he took, toiletries always appeared in the bathroom. He found more matches and candles in the chest in what he had begun to call his room. He knew, somehow, that this wasn’t normal. There was nothing for him to compare it against though, so he simply decided to be grateful. It wasn’t like he could leave to restock the house.

The book he had destroyed trying to break the windows remained the way it was, however, and no replacement came for it.

He learned that there was absolutely no one else around him. He’d spent hours looking out the windows, calling as loudly as he could, but no one ever showed up. No one ever walked by. He wasn’t sure if it was because of how densely the trees were packed around him or if no one lived in the area around him. Or maybe it was just that there was no one but him anywhere.

The last thing he learned was that, no matter how hard he tried and how long he thought, he couldn’t recall anything from before that first day he woke up. It wasn’t like an empty gap in his memory, and it wasn’t like someone had reached inside his head and erased everything before that moment. There was nothing, and then there was something. It was like he had been born at that exact moment.

“Maybe that is what happened,” he said out loud to exactly no one. “I don’t think there’s anyone that knows I even exist.”

He had started talking out loud on the third day, just to be able to hear something. He was the only thing that produced any noise around the house; nothing hummed or creaked, and if any animals made sounds then it couldn’t get through the walls. All there was for sound was the sound of his footsteps, the sound the pages in the books made as he turned them, him eating and bathing and sleeping.

So he had started talking, humming, singing songs he made up. He held conversations with himself, small arguments over silly things.

[“that book is too long, get something shorter.”

“no way, I wanna read this one.”

“you’ll be at it forever, are you even gonna be able to finish it?”

“bite me.”]

As time slowly trickled on, time he couldn’t keep track of, he had learned another thing; he might be going crazy.

-

One day he didn’t get out of bed.

It was near the end of what he supposed was his first month there, and he was tired. He was tired of everything. His throat was raw from talking and singing to himself, trying not to let the silence get to him. His body ached from the single chair there was in the house for him to sit on. His mind was sluggish from the monotony. There wasn’t anything for him to do in this house but eat and sleep and read, and it had finally caught up to him.

He watched the light make patterns on the floor as the sun moved across the sky. He felt his body begin to ache from laying down and felt like crying. He hadn’t done that since the first day, but damnitt, he was in pain and now even laying down didn’t help. He choked back the tears and buried his face into his pillow instead.

Maybe if he didn’t move, he’d disappear into thin air. Maybe whoever had put him here would take a closer look and realize, whoops, they’d actually made a mistake. Tadashi wasn’t supposed to be in a house he couldn’t leave, where things appeared from nowhere. Tadashi wasn’t supposed to be alone. Whoever put him here would see these things and fix them, and Tadashi would wake up somewhere else where he wasn’t so lonely that it made him want to rip his hair out.

He ignored his hunger, his body, the changing light. It didn’t matter to him, not really. He’d get up tomorrow, but today he just wanted to pretend that none of this was happening.

“I want out of here,” he said as night fell. He said it softly, trying to pray even though he never had before. “I want out, but if I can’t have that, then please. Please, I want another person here with me. I want a friend.”

He falls asleep curled in on himself, his words echoing in the silent room.

-

A few days pass, and Tadashi finds himself back in his routine of reading through the day, discussing with himself the different plot points he finds in the books. He paces around the house as he reads, trying to keep himself busy and in motion. Trying to keep the routine from getting to him in any way he can.

He’s in the library when it happens. He’s almost finished with the latest book he’d been reading, a book about dragons and the knights who slay them, and he already knows which book he wants to grab next. He has the candle to see where he’s going, but he’s not paying attention as he walks the aisles. He’s so close to being done, just a page or two more, then he’ll grab the new book and maybe lay down while he—

His foot catches on something and pitches him forward.

It’s only by some miracle that he doesn’t drop the candle and set the place on fire. He does slam the bottom of his jaw on the open book he’s carrying though. He feels his teeth sink into his tongue and gives a close mouthed yelp. His knee hits the floor at an odd angle and he can feel it rattle a little.

He lays on the floor for a minute, groaning and cataloging the new pains he just acquired. His knee is throbbing and he can taste the blood welling up in his mouth, and his hand aches a little from the vice grip he put on the candle to keep it from falling away from him. Other than that though he’s fine, so he pushes himself up with a wince and twists around, wanting to get a look at what tripped him.

There’s nothing that he can see, at least not from the angle he’s at. He swallows the blood collecting in his mouth, grimacing at the taste, before crawling closer to where he had tripped over whatever it was he had hit. He found a small depression in the floor, nothing he would have found if he hadn’t been looking for it. Or if he hadn’t tripped on it, in this case.

He felt around the floor and realized that there was an almost unnoticeable catch, where the floor just barely didn’t meet together. He’d tripped over what felt like the opening of a trap door. Tadashi bit his lip, but he knew he was going to open it. Maybe it led to a way out of the house, and even if it didn’t, it was a part of the house he had never seen before. There had to be something down there.

He swallowed more blood and fit his fingers into the dip in the floor. He had to work them in tightly, but he finally managed it and pulled upward. It didn’t budge. Grunting, he threw all of his weight into the effort. At first it still didn’t go, and he started to think it wouldn’t open at all, but then he felt the smallest shift.

Another few minutes of struggling and pulling finally opened the trap door with a strangled creak that sounded more like wailing than it probably should. It was even darker down in the hole, like someone had poured ink down there. Like if he put his foot down there and tried to pull it out, the foot just wouldn’t be there anymore. The hole would swallow any part of him whole.

“That’s silly,” he said to an empty audience, but his hand was still shaking when he grabbed to candle.

Lighting up the hole in the ground revealed a set of stairs that led down. Tadashi swallowed through a suddenly tight throat; he had the inexplicable urge to slam the hidden door shut and close of this room forever, all of a sudden. Never come back into the library, pretend he had never found this small room. How could he though? He needed to know everything he could about this house he was trapped in.

He kept this in mind as he slowly started down the stairs. Every step produced a loud groaning noise, which made him worry that they wouldn’t hold his weight going down. The staircase proved itself to be short, however, and he soon found himself standing on a dirt floor of what turned out to be a small cellar.

Inspecting the room dashed any hopes he may have had about an escape. He looked at everything, where the walls met each other, where the ceiling met the walls. Hell, he even got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the dirt. There was no other hidden door in this room.

There really wasn’t much of anything in the room, to be honest. The only thing he found was a small shelf that held three books, all much older than any of the ones he had found in the library. He sat down in front of it, feeling frustrated, feeling that sense of hopelessness creep back onto him. What was the point of this room existing if there was nothing for him in it?

“Fuck!” he yelled, hating the word, wishing that it would make him feel better.

He sat there for a few long minutes before he stood back up, wanting to leave the room. He didn’t like it down here, didn’t like the emptiness, how the light from his candle only reached a few feet out from him. He wanted to leave and never come back down here. He snatched up the books and went as quickly up the stairs as he could without managing to trip.

The last he saw of the cellar was the inky blackness that had come back when he took the candle away before he slammed the trapdoor shut behind him.

-

One of the books he had pulled out of the cellar was too water damaged to read. The words had blurred and ran down the pages, ink smeared on his fingers when he tried to smooth out the pages. With a huff he tossed the book to the side, hoping the other two would be okay. He didn’t want his trip down to the cellar to be for nothing.

The second book wasn’t damaged, but it was in a language he couldn’t understand. He flipped through it listlessly, but near the middle of the book he found pictures of bodies torn apart and he quickly shut it and put it aside.

The third book was the thickest one of all of them. There was no title on it. The cover was soft leather, dark red in colour, gold trimming around the edges. The pages were brittle with age. This one he _could_ read, but it was a magic book it seemed, out of all things. How to create something out of nothing. He wanted to scoff at it, but he was also trapped in a house with supplies that came from nowhere when he was asleep. He didn’t have a lot of ground to stand on. The book didn’t make much sense to Tadashi, but maybe he could make it make sense. What else was there to do, after all? Maybe there would be a useful entry for him in it.

Flipping through the book found him strange entries, things like _How to Make Gold Out of Dirt_ and _Simple Curses,_ and one entry titled _The Alchemy and Makings of Human Organs_. He chose to skip over that one. Near the middle of the book were loose pages, smaller than the rest. It wasn’t a part of the book itself, but it was clear it belonged. Tadashi gingerly took the pages out and looked at the title of the entry.

_How to Make a Living Doll._

Skimming through the article, he realized it was instructions for how to make a human sized doll, with words to bring it to life. A doll that would stay loyal and love you no matter what. He immediately was interested, but in a detached sort of way. It sounded nice, it sounded _fantastic_ even. Something he could have with him, to keep him company, something to talk other than himself. It just didn’t seem likely. How was a doll supposed to come to life? It didn’t have a heart, or a brain, or anything that any living thing did. That didn’t seem like a good way to live, if you asked Tadashi. Besides, even if he did believe that it could work, he didn’t have anything he needed to make one—

Tadashi whipped his head towards the sewing room.

-

Tadashi hadn’t really been in the room after he had explored it that first day. The books in the library had seemed a more interesting way to pass the time, and he honestly wasn’t even sure he know how to use anything in there. He kept the door open, to add more light in the living area, but for the most part he stayed out of it.

Except now he was wandering into the room in a daze, clutching the papers with the instructions for a _living doll, as if_ in his hands, wondering if he could do it.

“This is crazy,” he said as he inspected all the fabric in the room. “Like, this is certifiable, Tadashi. You should be locked up for even thinking this could work,” he insisted as he checked to see what kind of accessories there were for the doll’s face. “Well,” he amended, “maybe you’re already locked up. Maybe you went crazy a while ago and this is where they’re keeping you,” he finished as he decided that he had everything he needed.

“You’re not really going to do this, are you?” he asked himself, staring down at the papers in his hands.

He thought about his life from the first moment he woke up. He thought about the panic he had felt, trapped alone in this house in the middle of nowhere. He thought about the day he realized that there was no one else even around the house, the isolation he had felt. He thought about the slowness of his days, trying to fill the time with books and his own voice saying nothing new to him. He thought about how many times he had choked back tears at night. He thought about the prayer he had tried to make, for either a way out or for a friend. And here were these papers in his hands, with instructions on how he could make his own friend. Someone that would love him and stay with him in this house.

“I really am going to do this,” he answered himself, and he went into the living area to grab the one chair and put in front of the sewing machine.

-

It turned out that Tadashi didn’t know how to use a sewing machine. He looped the string in it wrong the first two times and jammed the stupid thing. He spent a whole hour just fixing it, trying to fight back the panic. What if he broke it? He thought back to the book he had destroyed trying to get out. Food was replaced, but the book hadn’t been. Food was necessary to his survival, the sewing machine wasn’t. If he broke it, it might not get replaced. If he broke it and it wasn’t replaced, he couldn’t make the doll. What would he do then?

He didn’t know.

Tadashi finally managed to unjam it, and he spent another hour figuring out how to loop the string through it without causing another jam. By the time he had convinced himself he had really figured it out, night had fallen, throwing the room into darkness. He didn’t want to stop working, wanted to keep going as long as he could. He wasn’t comfortable enough with the machine to trust himself not to break it in the dark though.

He pushed away from the desk with a frustrated growl. Grabbing the candle he made his way back to the library. Maybe he could find a book in there that would help him learn, though he didn’t have much hope for it. He gave up after a few hours of searching though.

“Of course nothing in the place wants to help me,” he grumbled, making his way out of the library. He meant to go to his room, try to sleep, but instead he found himself walking back to the sewing room.

“What do think you’re doing, knucklehead?” he asks himself as he walks into the room. “You can’t use that machine at night yet, you’re going to break it. Then where will you be?”

He didn’t use the machine, but he did spend the night going through the fabric, deciding which one he would use for the doll he was going to make.

-

It takes Tadashi days to finally work up to making the body for the doll. He’d been practicing sewing small swatches of fabric together, tying the loose knots so nothing came unraveled, even practicing sewing by hand for the trickier parts, like fingers. There was a pile of his disasters in the corner, but he’d slowly been getting better and better. He knows it’s time now, knows that waiting any longer would mean that he’s avoiding doing it. He doesn’t like the idea of avoiding something, even if no one else would know about it.

He chooses a pale pink fabric for the body of the doll. He likes how gentle it looks, likes how it just seemed to speak of kind things. That’s what he wants, something kind.

He manages to cut out the shape of the body and start to sew it together by the time it passes noon. Or when he guesses it passes noon, rather, since he can’t tell the time without a clock. He grabs an apple from the fridge and eats it as he stares at what he’s making silently.

The body of the doll would be smaller than him, slimmer. It seemed right to him, something he could watch over and take care of, something small and sweet to love. He’d decided to make a male doll; he’d read a lot of stories about brothers-in-arms lately, going on adventures and sharing everything together. It would be nice to have a friend like that, he figured. He was still deciding on a name for it though.

“Maybe you can tell me your name when you come to life,” he smiled, then scoffed at himself. “That’s dumb, Tadashi. How’s he supposed to know something like that?”

Sewing the fingers ends up being a nightmare. He pricks his fingers countless times, dots of blood forming at the tips of his fingers. He licks the blood away, hoping to keep it off the fabric. The blood would be obvious against the pink and he didn’t want to give this doll blood stained fingers. It felt like a rude thing to do.

He’s mostly finished with the top half of the doll by the time night rolls around. It hangs there limply, and he has a sudden thought of a person that had been skinned meticulously. He shivers and pulls the fabric off the chair, spreading it flat on the floor instead. It resembles a bear skin rug now, but it makes him feel better regardless.

He heads to bed after that, feeling satisfied, hoping for a good night’s sleep so he can wake up early the next day.

-

Sleep doesn’t find him easy that night though.

Instead, when he lays down, he wonders why there even is a sewing room in this house. The library made sense; Tadashi obviously knew how to read, and having it there was the one luxury he had had in the house before he had taken up this project for himself. He hadn’t known how to sew though, he had had to teach himself that talent. What was the point of putting a room with objects that he hadn’t known how to operate into a house where he was the sole occupant?

He wonders about that, and he wonders about the book he had found. As determined as he was to go through with making the doll, he still found himself a little uneasy at how convenient it was. A doll that comes to life? It would seem like a dream come true to someone that would face life alone otherwise. You’d need a place to make one though. Well, a sewing room is perfect for that, of course. Where else would you make a doll?

Curling onto his side, he wonders for the millionth time who had put him in this house. Or if anyone had actually put him here. He wasn’t aware of a life outside of these walls. He didn’t feel like he had a life that was taken away from him. Still though, the house replaces things that he uses, but only if they’re necessary for his survival, like the food, or things for his health. None of the places he had read about did those kind of things, people had to go out and get that stuff on their own.

He didn’t have that option though, not without any doors. Not with windows that wouldn’t break. He couldn’t leave, and no one could come in to rescue him. Which brought him back to the doll, and how convenient it was that there were instructions on how to make one in a house he was alone in.

He’d read through the whole book he’d found the pages in though. Some of the things he’d found in it were malevolent, but there were also a lot of ones that were meant to be helpful. The one for the doll seemed like a helpful one; it just talked about how it would make a doll that loved you and would want to stay with you. Besides, there was the very real chance that it wouldn’t even work.

Tadashi huffed out a breath and, resolving not to work himself up over it, willed himself to sleep.

-

He spent the next few days slowly finishing the doll, trying to get it as perfect as he could. He ended up having to go back and stitch things together again, or add more stitches in certain places. The fabric was a little bunched in some places, but he was happy when he had almost finished.

He hesitated a little before stuffing the doll. The papers said that he had to add ten drops of his blood into the cotton and say a few words. He also had to add a little blood to the top of the doll’s head when it was sewn up. It seemed a little eerie to him, but he also didn’t see how magic was supposed to be involved in this if he just made the damn thing by hand. Blood would do.

 _“My blood to yours,”_ he spoke as clearly as he could, driving a spare needle through the pad of his finger. _“Take my offering and it will birth you, let it not steer you wrong.”_

He decided it was safe to continue working when all he could see of his blood were faint pink stains, like the cotton had devoured it. He quickly put the cotton in the doll, rubbing a little blood on his finished seams when he finally put it all together.

He gave the doll dark yarn hair, letting it fall around the middle of its neck, smiling when it also ended up haphazardly in its face. He thought about using some of the glass eyes, but he wasn’t sure if the glue he had found would hold the eyes on well. He didn’t want the doll to lose an eye suddenly. So he sewed on big black buttons for eyes, hoping the stitches would hold. He left it without a mouth for now, unsure if the doll would even be able to talk if it had a mouth. He made a simple t-shirt for it to wear, and cotton pants that slid on easily.

He realized that he was finally finished.

It wasn’t a masterpiece, not by far, but Tadashi still felt insanely proud. It wasn’t lopsided or lumpy, and it certainly didn’t look like it would fall apart at the seams. It looked human enough to pass, even though he had made it accidentally a little shorter than he had meant to, the doll about a full foot shorter than him. The feet ended in rounded stumps, because Tadashi had been too nervous to try and make actual feet for it. The fingers pointed in the right direction, the eyes sat in the right place.

It looked perfect, to Tadashi at least.

“Hiro,” he said aloud, surprised but pleased with the name. “That’s a good name, right?”

Hiro didn’t respond.

“Right, right! The words, I have to say the words,” Tadashi muttered, grabbing the papers off the desk and shuffling them around. He cleared his throat.

_“I have crafted you with love and care, and now I ask, with every new breath you take, may you live a little more, until you come to life, and let me help along the way and give you the final push you need.”_

A minute passed, then two, then five.

Nothing happened.

Nothing at all.

Tadashi felt like screaming.

-

There had been frustration and anger, as he had cried into the doll’s chest like a child, because he hadn’t realized how _badly_ he had wanted it to work. Not until the option was taken away from him. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t help but think of the weeks he had put into this, the hope he had unknowingly been harboring that somehow this doll could live and be his friend.

“How stupid of you,” he told himself as he brought the doll and the chair to his room that night. He set Hiro down on the chair, sitting it as straight as he could manage, and put the chair within arm’s reach of the bed. Laying down, he kept his eyes on the doll for a long moment.

“You’re name is Hiro,” Tadashi finally tells him, deciding that even if it wasn’t alive, it was all he had. He’d take it and be grateful. “I guess you should know that. I made you myself. I found out how in a book, I guess it was like a magic book or something. Some magic, right? Couldn’t even make you come to life.” He sighed. “Or maybe I just screwed it up? Don’t hate me if it was my fault, please Hiro?”

Hiro didn’t respond. Tadashi finally tore his gaze away, turning onto his back.

“I wish it had worked. I don’t know, I just woke up in this house. I don’t think I’ve ever been outside it. Everyone in the books I read have other people though. I don’t think I’m supposed to be alone.” He smiled a little and turned his head back to Hiro, unable to help himself.

“I’m still glad I made you,” he whispered. “You’ll stay with me, right?”

Hiro couldn’t promise him that he’d be there forever, but he also couldn’t tell Tadashi that he wouldn’t be. He counted that as a win.

-

Tadashi carried Hiro around with him most of the next day.

He talked at it the whole day, describing the little house he was trapped in. Told it about the lack of door and how the windows wouldn’t break, how he’d been trying at least once a week to break the damn things but it never worked. He told it about how the only light in the house when it got dark was a single candle that Tadashi had to carry around, how the library had no window. He mentioned the cellar that he had found the book Tadashi had used to make it in, how he had felt like it would swallow him whole. He read aloud to it, pausing the story to discuss questions that Tadashi had about what was going on.

“It just seems silly to make a curse that takes years to take effect. Like, if it’s going to kill that person, why not just kill them then? Seems easier to me.”

“This guy is such a _jerk_. Why would you talk to people like that? It’s not fair to have someone treat you that way.”

“All these books have happy endings. Why is that? Then again, I’m not sure I’d like a sad ending.”

He talked to Hiro through a mouth full of food at lunch, making up silly theories as to why the house made its own supplies. He mentioned how only basic things got replaced and wondered at it. Hiro never reacted, but Tadashi didn’t let that deter him. It was nice to have something in the room with him, to make him feel a little better when he talked out loud. He already felt a little less crazy.

It’s nearing night time when he’s eating supper, discussing maybe making something else in the sewing room. He contemplated making another doll, trying the instructions again, before letting the idea go. It would hurt too much when it failed a second time.

“Maybe I should make some new clothes. I’m tired of washing these same ones over and over. Maybe I could make you some too, huh? Would you like that Hiro?”

Hiro slowly lifted its head towards Tadashi.

Tadashi let out a small shriek, which he will deny to his dying breath, and stumbled away from the table and chair that Hiro sat on. Hiro simply tilted its head, starting to sway a little in its seat.

“Well,” Tadashi said in a shaky voice, and Hiro immediately, if slowly, turned its head toward Tadashi again. “Well, I guess it did work, huh?”

Hiro twitched on the left side of its body, more of a jerking motion, and toppled off of the chair. Tadashi stared at him for a long moment, before he realized that Hiro was making no movement to pick itself up off the floor. It simply rested there, its head moving back and forth, rubbing its face against the floor. He quickly rushed over to the doll, picking it up and propping it against the chair.

“Hey,” he said, watching as Hiro once again slowly turned its head towards him. “Hey, are you… I mean, can you hear me?” Hiro swayed toward him. “I’ll take that as a yes. Could you hear me this whole time?” There was a long pause before Hiro nodded its head, as if unsure if this was the proper response to the question. Or just unsure of what was expected. “That’s good,” Tadashi breathed out. “That’s great, actually. Amazing. I’m so… I’m so happy.”

Tadashi touched his fingers to Hiro’s face, trying to contain the hysterical laughter he felt building up inside him. It came out as choked hiccups instead, but Hiro kept looking at him, leaning into Tadashi’s touch.

“I’m Tadashi,” he told it. “It’s so nice that you’re here.”

-

Hiro couldn’t walk, Tadashi found out when he tried to pick it— _him,_ he wasn’t an it anymore, when he tried to pick him up and set him on his feet. It— _he,_ he wobbled on the stubs of his feet before pitching forward again, right into Tadashi’s arms.

“Woah!” Tadashi cried out, wrapping his arms around Hiro, laughing a little under his breath. “Woah, hey, do you not know how to stand?” He thought he could feel Hiro tremble against him and tightened his arms. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s not a problem. We’ll work on it, yeah? And if you never can, that’s okay too. I’ll carry you, always.”

Hiro stopped trembling against him at his words, if that was what he was doing in the first place, and leaned a little heavier against Tadashi.

“We’ll start slow, okay?” Tadashi soothed.

It turned out Hiro didn’t really know how to move anything other than his head, so Tadashi spent the next hour helping him figure out his arms. It seemed a simpler task than trying to help him stand or walk, especially with night darkening the windows. He started by slowly running his hands up and down Hiro’s arms, applying pressure at varying points.

“These are your arms,” he told Hiro. “These are your hands. You use your hands to grab and hold and poke things, and your arms are there to help lift and support and hold as well.” Hiro had his head facing the direction of his arms, watching Tadashi touch his arms. Tadashi grabbed Hiro’s hands and curled the fingers together into a loose fist. “Do you feel that?”

Hiro slowly nodded.

“That’s good. Do you think you can copy what I just showed you?”

It took Hiro a few tries, but finally his fingers slowly curled together into the fists Tadashi had showed him. Tadashi clapped his hands together and Hiro’s head shot up at the sound, causing him to wobble dangerously.

“Hey, it’s okay!” Tadashi caught him quickly. “That was a good sound, a clap. You make it like this…”

Tadashi taught him how to clap, and showed him how to move his fingers separately, and how to lift and move his arms. He made sure to praise Hiro for everything he got right, partly because Hiro seemed to like it best when Tadashi was talking.

Tadashi had to carry Hiro to bed that night, but that was okay. Hiro lay down in the bed with him, and Tadashi watched him move his arms around on his own, seemingly fascinated by what he could do now. He watched Hiro touch his own body, made of soft fabric. Hiro kept one of his hands on his own body and reached out to touch Tadashi with the other hand.

“I feel different, huh?” Hiro nodded. “It’s okay,” Tadashi told him. “You’re perfect.”

He fell asleep with one of Hiro’s hands still on him.

-

Teaching Hiro to walk was a bit of an ordeal. Tadashi spent another hour with him after he woke up going over Hiro’s legs like they had his arms the night before. Showing him how to move, and how to do different things. Hiro seemed to catch onto this quicker after already having repeated the process before.

Balancing and standing turned out to be a different sort of challenge though. Hiro couldn’t keep himself upright without Tadashi there to support him. Every time Tadashi took his hands away, Hiro would immediately start to wobble and topple to the side. Tadashi vowed that if Hiro couldn’t manage it on his own, he’d go and fix his feet for him. Would that hurt Hiro though? Could he feel pain? Tadashi wasn’t sure.

Around noon, with not a lot of progress, Tadashi grabbed Hiro’s hands and stood in front of him.

“I’ll keep a hold of you, okay? I want you to try walking towards me.”

Hiro didn’t move.

“It’ll be okay,” Tadashi reassured him. “I’ve got your hands right here,” Tadashi squeezed his hands, “and if you fall I’ll catch you. I just want you to try, okay?”

Hiro didn’t move.

“Just try, please? You know how to move your legs now. Just try to move one of them forward. Not a lot, okay? We’ll take this as slow as you need.”

It continued like that, Tadashi saying as many soothing things as he could think of, until he managed to coax a small step out of Hiro. He was delighted when Hiro wobbled but didn’t fall.

“Very good! Try that again, but with your other foot, okay?”

On and on through the day. They walked in small circles around the living area, and when Hiro got the hang of that, Tadashi propped him with his arms against the chair, to try standing on his own. After he got the hang of that, he coaxed Hiro into standing without any sort of prop. Then he coaxed him into walking towards Tadashi.

Hiro was reluctant to do that, which Tadashi didn’t blame him for.

“It’s okay, I’m not that far from you, see?” Hiro lowered his head. “You already practiced to walk. It’s just like that, it’s just I won’t be holding your hands, yeah? It’ll be fine. I’ll always catch you, remember?”

The words seemed to appease Hiro, and he slowly took his first step towards Tadashi on his own.

The rest of the day was filled with nothing but practice and Tadashi’s growing pride as Hiro slowly but surely got the hang of walking on his own. He made sure to talk Hiro through the whole thing, encouraging and praising him the better that he got. By the time night rolled around again Hiro was walking confidentially, if a bit slowly, and Tadashi was exhausted.

“You did great today Hiro. You ready for bed?” Hiro tilted his head. “C’mon, we can walk to the room together, that sound good?” Tadashi was already turning around and walking towards the bedroom, ready to collapse on the bed and curl up around Hiro again. A soft ‘thud’ behind him stopped him in his tracks though.

Turning around gave him the sight of Hiro, facing a completely different direction, pulling himself away from the wall he just ran into. His fingers ran along the wall to guide him, but he started walking in the opposite direction.

“Hiro?”

Hiro stopped and turned towards Tadashi, _towards the sound of his voice_ , Tadashi realized suddenly. He watched as Hiro started walking towards him but quickly went off-course again without Tadashi talking to him.

“Hiro, you can’t see, can you?”

-

It made sense when Tadashi thought about it; it’s not like buttons can act as eyes in any way. He wasn’t sure how well the glass eyes would work, or if they would even work at all, but it had to be better than buttons. Which is how he found himself sitting on the floor with Hiro in the sewing room half an hour later, carefully taking off his button eyes by candle light.

He was worried as he took a small pair of scissors to the thread that held Hiro’s eyes to his face. He didn’t want to poke or tear anything. What if this was hurting Hiro? Did Hiro even know how to tell if he was in pain? There were too many questions. Hiro sat patiently on the floor, not moving after Tadashi had asked him to keep still.

When the eyes had finally come off, Tadashi was left staring at the blank slate that was Hiro’s face, and he felt sad for some reason.

He chose a bigger pair of brown eyes. He thought they looked nice against the pink of the fabric that made up Hiro. He wished there was a more secure way of keeping the eyes on Hiro. All he had was the glue though, and he couldn’t think of a way to sew the eyes on with thread. It would have to do.

“Can you lay down Hiro? It’ll make this easier.”

Tadashi helped him down when it became clear that Hiro wasn’t sure how to make his body lay down quite yet. He applied a ring of glue to the back of the first eye and hovered over Hiro.

“I’m gonna have to put pressure on this, make sure it stays on. Just, let me know if it hurts you, okay? I’ll stop if it does.”

Hiro just lay there passively though, and Tadashi applied the first eye, then the second. He had to admit that they did look a lot better than the buttons had. More like a real human, except that the glass eyes had no whites. Tadashi helped Hiro sit up when he thought the glue had dried enough to move him cautiously.

“Well? Can you see anything?”

Hiro moved his head around the room before shaking his head. Tadashi bit back a sigh.

“It’s okay. Let’s go to bed, okay?”

-

He woke up the next morning to find Hiro standing in front of the desk, his hand close to the window. He was opening and closing it, flexing his fingers one by one. Tadashi watched as he lowered his hand, only to raise the other one and repeat the process. He didn’t say anything until Hiro switched hands again.

“Good morning.” Hiro turned to face him, and Tadashi could see the light reflect off the glass eyes. “What are you doing?” Hiro raised his hands and started wiggling his fingers. “Can you see that?” A nod. “Can you see me?” Another nod, this one a little quicker, and Hiro started walking towards the bed. He was still a little clumsy on his feet, but it didn’t matter much when Hiro toppled onto the bed. He kept nodding as he touched his fingers to Tadashi’s face, touching his eyes and nose and chin.

Tadashi smiled, and Hiro traced the curve of it with stiff fingers.

-

Hiro followed Tadashi wherever he went. Tadashi had to teach Hiro very quickly that a closed bathroom door means no coming in, but when that happened Hiro would stand outside until Tadashi came out. He followed so close on Tadashi’s heels that if Tadashi made a sudden stop, Hiro would bump into him. He wouldn’t admit it out loud, but Tadashi thought it was cute.

He thought that he was doing it because Hiro didn’t really seem to know how to think for himself. He could answer yes or no questions, ‘do you know where I left my water?’, and he could respond to direct requests, ‘can you go get it for me please?’, but he mostly relied on Tadashi to see how he should react to things. He copied a lot of the things Tadashi did throughout a day.

If Tadashi stretched his arms, Hiro did the same thing.

If Tadashi walked in circles to stretch his legs after sitting for a while, Hiro walked the same circles.

Tadashi tripped over a misplaced shirt one time and Hiro, who had appeared rather confused as to why Tadashi was suddenly on the floor, suddenly waved his arms around and pitched himself forward, falling next to Tadashi. He hadn’t understood why Tadashi had started laughing, but when Tadashi opened his arms Hiro had curled into him all the same.

He went to bed when Tadashi did and got out of bed when Tadashi did.

Which is why Tadashi is confused when he wakes up one morning and Hiro isn’t next to him.

He sits straight up, confused and panicked. Why wasn’t Hiro in the bed with him? Hiro was always there, it didn’t make sense for him to just wander off. Was he lost somewhere in the house? He couldn’t open doors very well, maybe he had gone into one of the rooms and gotten locked in on accident. What if he had hurt himself?

 _What if I just dreamed him up?_ Tadashi wondered, and he suddenly felt sick. Right when he was about to shoot out of bed and tear the house apart, he heard a crash from the bathroom. Within seconds he was barreling through the door, ignoring his own ‘don’t go in the bathroom when the door is closed’ rule. He was slightly horrified by what he saw.

The first time he had shown Hiro his reflection in the mirror, Tadashi remembered, Hiro hadn’t really understood what he was looking at. He kept looking at his reflection and then around the room, trying to locate who it was in the mirror.

“That’s you,” Tadashi had told him, taking one of Hiro’s hands and placing it on the mirror. Hiro stared at his hand for a moment before looking back at his reflection. Then he had looked at Tadashi. Then he started touching his own face. He had poked at his eyes, tugged his hair, becoming more and more agitated as he went along. Tadashi frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

Hiro shook his head frantically and tugged Tadashi towards him. He poked at Tadashi’s cheeks, tugged his hair, before poking at himself once more. He kept shaking his head. Tadashi finally understood what was wrong.

“Are you upset because we look different?” Hiro froze, staring at Tadashi intently. “It’s because we’re made of different things. You’re a doll, but I’m human. See,” he grabbed Hiro’s arm, “our skin isn’t the same because yours is fabric, but mine’s flesh. It’s okay that we look different, it’s normal, so please don’t worry.” He had thought that his words had calmed Hiro down, but he had also noticed that Hiro hadn’t looked at himself in the mirror since that day.

Except now apparently he had changed his mind, and Tadashi found him standing in front of the mirror. He had cut a jagged line across his face, the cotton stuffing poking out. The crash Tadashi had heard, he realized through his shock, was the knife he had used to cut the hole falling to the floor. Hiro turned towards him, trying to push the cotton back into his head. Tadashi opened his arms and Hiro brightened, walking towards him and curling his body into Tadashi’s.

“Hiro, what is this? What are you doing?” He couldn’t keep the tremble out of his voice. Hiro pulled away slightly and brought his hand up, tapping his fingers against Tadashi’s lips.

Tadashi instantly felt horrible. Hiro was trying to make himself a mouth so he could talk to Tadashi. He hadn’t really thought about it, too delighted to have someone with him to realize he had neglected to give him a chance to have a voice. He pulled Hiro back into his arms.

“Okay, we’ll work on this together, okay?”

It’s trickier than he thought, and he ends up pricking his fingers more than once. He can’t avoid getting some of it into the fabric this time, and he’s quick to apologize, but Hiro doesn’t seem to mind. It was worth it, in the end, when he got to see Hiro stretch his new mouth as wide as it would go, his first smile and frown. He pulls various faces at Hiro and claps when Hiro manages to copy them.

He doesn’t get his voice for another day, but Tadashi isn’t surprised this time. It took time for Hiro to be able to move and see, why would being able to speak be any different? He’s reading aloud to Hiro, keeping an idle eye on him as he stretches his mouth out into the shapes Tadashi’s been teaching him.

“…aaaaa…”

He instantly shuts the book and turns his body to face Hiro, who looks a little confused but very pleased.

“Was that you?” Hiro nods. “Can you do it again?”

Hiro struggles for a moment but finally manages to produce another sound, this one a more drawn out “haaa”. His voice sounds odd; it’s muffled like he’s talking with, well, with his mouth full of cotton. There’s a strange rasp to it, but it’s low and almost unnoticeable. Tadashi smiles at him.

“Good! Let’s try some other sounds, okay?”

The day goes on like that, going over the same and different sounds, over and over. Tadashi is grateful that, while Hiro takes a while to get used to doing something comfortably, he’s a very fast learner. Still, it’s close to night by the time Hiro gets a word out.

“Tadashi,” and it shouldn’t melt Tadashi, it really shouldn’t, but Hiro sounds so earnest and he’s looking him right in the eye. Like Tadashi’s approval is everything he could want, like he wants to make Tadashi happy more than anything.

“Tadashi,” Hiro says again, reaching forward and touching the tears that he didn’t realize were falling down his face.

“Hiro,” he replies, his voice wobbly. He laughs when Hiro holds his arms open, like Tadashi’s done for him countless times. He goes to Hiro willingly, sighing when he feels his arms close around his body.

“Tadashi,” Hiro says a final time, tightening his hold.

-

“… and the prince thrust the sword through the evil Queen’s heart, and with her death came the end of the curse on the land. And all the townsfolk did celebrate, for the evil Queen was no more, and they could finally live in peace. The end.” Tadashi shut the book and smiled at Hiro. “What did you think?”

“I liked it,” Hiro replied, which was what he always said after Tadashi had read him something. Except he was frowning this time, looking as troubled as he could.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, ‘m fine.” Hiro scooted closer to him though, still frowning.

It went on like that through the day. Tadashi had never seen Hiro as anything but delighted by his existence, following Tadashi around and parroting his words back at him. Hiro always smiled, even when Tadashi made rude noises when Hiro poked him awake in the morning. The only time he didn’t seem happy was when Tadashi had to go to bed. When asked about it, Tadashi learned that Hiro didn’t actually sleep.

“You get bored?” Tadashi had asked, smiling as they curled up under the blankets.

“I like it best when you smile. You don’t do that asleep,” Hiro had replied, touching the smile Tadashi was wearing as if to prove himself.

He was upset about something now, though, and quiet about whatever it was. He didn’t get up to follow Tadashi around, instead watching him as he got up and wandered the room. He didn’t say anything to Tadashi either, but listened to him very closely when Tadashi spoke. It got to the point that when Tadashi went to take a bath that night and Hiro actually did follow, Tadashi let him into the room instead of closing the door.

He thought Hiro might say something as he drew the water, but he was still silent, watching Tadashi closely in this situation he had never been granted to see before. It was a little embarrassing, being watched by the doll as he undressed, but he wanted to know what was bothering Hiro.

Tadashi slipped into the tub, the water sliding over his shoulders in a warm wave. Hiro leaned over the lip of the tub but didn’t move to touch the water. He didn’t like the feeling of his fabric getting wet. Tadashi lay in there for a few minutes before Hiro finally said something.

“In that story earlier…”

“Which one?”

“With the prince and the Queen… What’s death?”

Tadashi blinked. Hiro had started getting better at showing emotions lately, and could ask what something was when Tadashi was using something. This was the first time he had asked about something that wasn’t right in front of him, though, or something he was using.

He knew Hiro was slowly getting smarter, but he hadn’t been expecting a question like this for a while.

“Death is when you don’t wake up,” Tadashi got out eventually. He sat up straighter in the tub. “See, living things, we have a heart, right? And it beats, and that’s what keeps us alive.” He gently grabs one of Hiro’s hands and puts it on his chest, letting him feel the thump-thump of his heart beating. “And if that ever stops beating, that means that the person or animal has died. And when you die… that’s it. You’re not around anymore.”

Hiro looked at his hand on Tadashi’s chest before taking it and putting it on his own chest. He frowned after a minute.

“I can’t feel my heart.”

 _Oh no,_ Tadashi thought, feeling his heart break. He didn’t know how to explain this.

“You don’t have a heart, Hiro,” he said softly. Hiro’s frown deepened as much as it could on the stiff face. “You’re not alive like I am, you’re not a human like me. You won’t die.”

“You have a heart,” Hiro said slowly. “You’re human…”

“I’m human, and I’ll die one day,” Tadashi confirmed, hating this conversation. He hated the way Hiro reeled backwards like Tadashi had slapped him in the face.

“No! I don’t want you to!” Hiro cried out. Tadashi blew out a shaky breath.

“I’m sorry, Hiro. Death can’t be stopped.”

“You’re going to leave me. Why would you do that?” Hiro asked quietly. Tadashi thought Hiro would be crying if he were capable of it. He certainly felt close to tears.

“Hey, no,” and thank goodness Hiro still came to him when Tadashi held his arms open, tucking his face into the crook of Tadashi’s neck. “I don’t want to. Why would I ever want to leave you? I love you, Hiro.” And he did, he really did. Hiro was the best friend he could have ever wished for, more like a brother at this point, even if he was a doll. Even if Tadashi would have to leave him alone one day. “It’s not something I can help though.”

“Then I want to be human too,” Hiro told him, muffled by Tadashi’s skin. “I want to be alive like you so I can die too.”

“You can’t be human, Hiro.” Tadashi ran his fingers through Hiro’s yarn hair, feeling a few tears slip out. He sighed. “I don’t want you to die.”

“I don’t want to be alive without you.”

“Hey,” Tadashi said, pushing Hiro away as gently as he could. Hiro looked as devastated as he’d ever looked, like Tadashi had crushed every one of his dreams that had just started to bud. “I’m not gonna die for a while, okay? We don’t have to worry about that for years.”

“Really?”

“Really. We have so much time left together. Let’s not worry about death for now, okay? We have years to figure it out.”

Hiro stayed silent, but he nodded. He stayed quiet through Tadashi draining the tub and getting ready for bed, and he was quiet as they crawled into bed together. They curled around each other, like they always did, and Tadashi expected the silence to continue through the night. He was just starting to slip into sleep when he felt Hiro sigh.

“I’ll be human,” Hiro whispered, “and we’ll die together, and we’ll never live without each other.”

Tadashi wanted to comment on that, he really did, but he was already asleep.

-

Tadashi woke up with a start and found that Hiro wasn’t in bed with him for a second time.

He blinked rapidly, trying to calm his heart, and it took him a few seconds to realize that it was a crashing that had woken him up, louder this time than it had been the last. He remembered last time Hiro hadn’t been in bed, last time he had heard a crashing noise. Hiro’s face split open, cotton pushing out the hole he had created in his own head. Hiro’s desire to talk, to be more like Tadashi, which had led to him mutilating himself.

He threw himself out of bed, running towards the bathroom, but the door was already open. He could already see that Hiro wasn’t in there. He clutched the sides of the doorway, dumbfounded for a moment. Hiro wasn’t in the room. How could he have gotten out of bed and out the room without waking him up? Hiro still stumbled on his feet, couldn’t help doing so because of the stumps, and it was hard for him to twist the doorknobs. He would have made noise. He wasn’t in the room though, so he had somehow managed it.

What had Hiro needed from outside the room?

He started quickly for the door, wondering that to himself. Hiro normally hated being somewhere Tadashi wasn’t. He was only begrudgingly okay with bedtime because he knew Tadashi couldn’t help it. He resented Tadashi having to go to the bathroom, though, knowing he wasn’t allowed to follow him in.

“Why don’t you just not go?” Hiro had asked one day, frowning when Tadashi laughed at him.

“That’s not how it works,” he replied, smiling. “I go to the bathroom because I ate and drink water, and it needs to come out.”

“Then don’t do those things! I don’t gotta.”

“You don’t have to because you’re not human.” Hiro had grown silent at that, looking pensive. He still followed Tadashi to the library eagerly, though.

Walking into the main area, he saw that the door to the sewing room was open. There was the sound of shuffling items, distressed noises barely heard underneath them. He sighed, relieved and concerned at the same time, and rushed over to the open door. Had Hiro hurt himself? Maybe he had knocked something on top of himself and gotten stuck.

“Oh no, oh no…” Tadashi frowned at those words, quietly muttered. Hiro hadn’t realized he was awake, he didn’t think. Walking into the room alerted the doll to his presence though, and he turned quickly to face Tadashi, startled. It looked like Hiro had accidentally pulled the top drawer out of the desk, all of the contents spilled onto the floor. He was sitting in the middle of it, trying to clean it up.

“Hiro? What happened?” Hiro hunched in on himself, looking miserable.

“I’m sorry, Tadashi… I didn’t mean to… I was just looking…”

“It’s okay,” Tadashi said, surprised. He wasn’t used to this kind of nervous babbling from the doll; Hiro was usually confident or curious, he didn’t seem to understand the concept of nerves. Why would he, though? Hiro never had anything to feel nervous about, not with the way Tadashi was constantly supportive and understanding and patient with him while he learned.

Except now something was making him nervous, and Tadashi couldn’t figure out what.

“Were you looking for something?” Hiro seemed to shrink even more into himself at the question.

“No, I don’t… I was just…” He let the sentence trail off into silence, turning away from Tadashi and picking up some of the bigger things off the floor. He really looked at the mess for the first time; spools of thread, buttons, small glass beads, an open box spilling out sewing needles—

His heart skipped a beat, imagining Hiro trying to pick those up and instead getting them stuck in his hands, and what if they went to deep and wouldn’t come out?

“Here, it’s okay, let me pick this stuff up,” Tadashi said, walking over and kneeling down on the floor next to him. Hiro’s hands fluttered in the air slightly before he brought them to his lap. He watched silently as Tadashi picked up the smaller things that his stiff fingers couldn’t quite grasp.

Tadashi supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. After Hiro had asked about death a few nights ago, he seemed to be more curious about the things around him. He asked more questions about things that happened in the books they read, rather than just passively listening, and he asked more about why Tadashi did the things he did. It only seemed natural for that to progress to a curiosity of the house they lived in.

Collecting the sewing needles back into their box, he paused for a moment. There was something bugging him, tickling the back of his mind. Something was… _off,_ yes, that was the best word for it. Something was off about the items he had just picked up and put back in the drawer. Something was off about the little box of needles in his hand, he just didn’t know what. He could feel the knowledge, though, like a bubble about to burst. If he could just concentrate…

“Are you mad at me Tadashi?” The words were rushed and soft, and Tadashi looked over at Hiro, surprised by them. Hiro was curled in on himself, looking down at his hands in his lap. He looked miserable and ashamed, like he had done something unforgivable, something Tadashi would hate him for.

“Oh, Hiro, no.” He set the box of needles into the drawer, next to everything else he had picked up. The bubble of realization he had almost had went away as he drew Hiro into his arms, hugging him tight. “I’m not mad. It’s okay if you’re curious, and I know you didn’t mean to pull the drawer out.”

“But I—“ Hiro started, then cut himself off suddenly. He titled his head up towards Tadashi. “But I made a mess,” he said, like it was a dirty secret.

“Accidents happen,” he told him, smiling. “It’s okay. And look, it’s all cleaned up now. Let’s put the drawer back and start our day. If you’re ever curious about something in the house, don’t hesitate to ask me, okay?”

“Okay,” Hiro replied, smiling a little. He watched as Tadashi slid the drawer back into the desk, standing up and rushing out the door when Tadashi started to stand himself.

Tadashi got to the door and looked back into the room. He thought about the box of needles, and the thought he had almost had but couldn’t quite reach. He wondered what it had been about, to have unsettled him like it did. It was gone now, but maybe if he reached for it…

“Tadashi, come on!”

“Coming!” he called back, letting the thought slip out of his mind. It probably wasn’t very important, he figured, if he could forget it so quickly.

-

“Why’re you holdin’ your arm funny?”

Tadashi jolts a little at the question. He and Hiro were sitting on their bed, the only space in the house where they could sit down next to each other without being on the floor. Hiro had a book on his lap, one of the fairytale books Tadashi had already gone through, reading out loud slowly. Tadashi had been spending the past few days teaching him how to read, and he was proud of the progress he had made. He was so proud of how smart the little doll was, and it always made him smile how easily Hiro picked up something new. He still needed help with the bigger or longer words, but Tadashi made sure that Hiro was always comfortable asking.

“Oh, ah, I think I just slept on it wrong. It’s been kinda numb since I woke up.”

“Numb?”

“Uhm… Numb is when you can’t feel anything in the area. Like, my arm is numb, so I can’t feel when I poke or pinch it. It makes it hard to move it.” Hiro nodded a little before reaching forward and poking Tadashi in the arm. “Yeah, see,” he grinned, “I couldn’t feel that.”

It was actually starting to worry him. He had woken up before in the past with a dead arm, having slept on it wrong, but it’s never lasted this long. There are small parts of the arm that aren’t numb either, which didn’t make sense. He didn’t think it was because he had slept on it wrong, but he didn’t know what else it would be.

Hiro frowned.

“I poked real hard though,” he muttered, reaching forward and taking Tadashi’s arm gently this time. He rubbed his thumb along the inside of Tadashi’s elbow. Tadashi smiled at Hiro’s bent head.

“Hey, don’t worry. It won’t be numb forever. You wanna keep reading to me?” Hiro kept rubbing his thumb along Tadashi’s skin, not meeting his eyes, but he nodded after a minute. Letting go, he grabbed up the book that he had let fall into his lap. Before he started reading again though, he looked right up into Tadashi’s eyes.

“It’ll be okay, Tadashi. I promise.” Tadashi smiled at the look on Hiro’s face, so serious and solemn.

“I know, Hiro. C’mon, tell me more about Sleeping Beauty.”

-

Tadashi couldn’t get out of bed the next day.

Hiro had poked him awake, as had become a routine of his that Hiro found entirely too amusing. Except when Tadashi had sat up to swat at Hiro, the world had gone grey instead. The next thing he knew, Hiro was hovering over him looking as worried as he could.

“Tadashi? You fell, why’d you fall? Are you okay?”

“I’m,” Tadashi started, wanting to reassure Hiro, but couldn’t finish. He was so _tired._ He’d never felt like this before, so light headed and weak. “I’m still tired, I think,” he managed, his voice barely above a whisper.

“You slept all night though.” Tadashi could tell Hiro tried to go for petulant, like he usually did when Tadashi tried to sleep in instead of get up and spend time with him. All that came across was worry. Tadashi was a little worried too, if he were being honest.

“Maybe I’m sick…” Tadashi offered, curling onto his side, closing his eyes. Hiro frowned.

“Are you dying?” Hiro asked, his voice shaking. Tadashi tried to smile, but even that seemed too much effort.

“No,” he replied, not sure if he was lying. “No, I just need to sleep more. Stay with me?” Hiro didn’t say anything, but he laid back down next to Tadashi, cuddling close to him.

They spent the day like that, Tadashi drifting in and out of a restless sleep, too weak to get up for anything. Hiro had gotten up at one point to grab a book, and he alternated between running his fingers through Tadashi’s hair and reading out loud to him. He got a cup of water for Tadashi, but he didn’t have the energy to drink more than a few sips.

“You’re a different colour than usual,” Hiro had remarked sometime when it was still early. Tadashi had blearily cracked an eye open at him.

“What do you mean?” he slurred out, wanting to go back to sleep. Hiro waved his hands around, huffing a little.

“You… You’re lighter than usual.” Tadashi closed his eye again, burrowing into the bed more fully.

“Pale. I’m paler, you mean.”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I’m just sick,” he answered, but this didn’t feel like being sick, he didn’t think. It felt different, like being drained of everything inside him. He didn’t need to say that to Hiro, though. No reason to make him worry more than he already was. “I’ll be okay.”

Night was falling by the time Tadashi started to feel a little better. He was contemplating getting more water from the cup still by the bed, and then maybe he could try standing up again, at least to go to the bathroom, when Hiro shifted next to him. He opened his eyes and looked at Hiro, but Hiro wasn’t looking back at him. He had his eyes locked on the ceiling, an odd look on his face.

“I’m sorry, Tadashi,” Hiro said quietly. Tadashi blinked.

“Don’t be,” he said softly, reaching out to wrap his arm around the doll. “This isn’t your fault. Humans, sometimes they just get sick. I’m feeling a little better now, though, so it’s all fine.” Hiro didn’t answer. “Okay, Hiro? Don’t feel bad.”

“Okay,” he whispered, but he still wouldn’t look at Tadashi. He sighed out a breath through his nose before slowly pushing himself up into a sitting position.

“Can you hand me the cup of water, please?” Tadashi asked.

He smiled as he watched Hiro scramble around to get it for him.

-

Tadashi had been standing on the desk in his and Hiro’s room for a good hour, watching snow fall outside.

He hadn’t been sure what he’d been expecting, if he were honest with himself. He knew a good chunk of time had passed since he had woken up, but seeing the seasons change like this made it seem more real somehow. Less like it was just a crazy dream he might one day wake up from. Snow was falling outside, though, weighing down the branches of the trees beyond the clearing, covering the grass that had died weeks ago.

He wanted to go outside; he’d never experienced snow before, but every book with a mention of it made it seem wonderful. He wanted to run around and kick the snow, feel the sting of cold on his fingers. He wanted to bring Hiro, see what kind of face he made when the doll would step outside. He wanted to play and run with Hiro until they were soaked and freezing, then come back inside to warm up.

He wanted all of that to be a choice he could have, but knew it wasn’t possible.

He wasn’t sure what to do with the melancholy ache inside his chest.

Tadashi heard Hiro come back into the room, walking over to where he was. He had been watching with Tadashi at first, but the snow had only just started to fall and he’d grown quickly bored, leaving to go continue his book. Something with wolves and women and a nuclear winter, whatever that was. He hadn’t read it himself yet, but Hiro seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Are you still watching that stuff fall?”

“Yeah,” he replied, turning his head, smiling at the sight of little Hiro so much shorter than him than usual. “Here, come up and see.” Hiro huffed, but climbed up onto the chair to get to the desk. Tadashi’s smile widened, looking at the newly made feet he had made for Hiro. It had certainly been eventful, the doll plopping down in front of him a few days back and asking for feet like Tadashi’s. He’d been a little wary, but there had been a lot more practice done in the sewing room since he had first made Hiro, and who was he to say no? It had taken forever, the rest of that day and a sleepless night, well into the next morning, but Hiro had finally gotten the feet he had wanted. They had certainly improved his balance, which Tadashi had been grateful for.

He scooched over for Hiro, who had to stand on the tips of his toes to see out the window.

“Oh,” Hiro said softly, instantly mesmerized by the snow on the ground.

“Yeah,” he replied, just as softly, turning his gaze back out the window.

“Snow, right? That’s what you called it?” Hiro asked after a couple minutes silence. “What’s it like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever read about it, I’ve never been out in it.”

“Then how do you know this is snow?” Tadashi turned back to Hiro, thrown by the question.

“I just do,” he replied, a little puzzled. He’d never seen it before in his life, but the books always described it like this; white, puffy flakes falling from the sky, dazzling when the sun hit it.

He hadn’t thought of the books when he’d first seen it falling, though. Hadn’t even thought about them until well into his observation. He’d just known, somehow. He’d seen it falling from the sky, the clouds dark grey and thick from what he could see, and instantly thought _it’s snowing._

Another puzzling thing, like how he’d already known how to read and what his name was when he’d awoken.

“Well, then what do the books say?”

“They say it’s cold,” he started, looking back out at the trees once more. “It’s cold, and wet, and it makes everything quiet around you. It’s supposed to be peaceful.” Hiro hummed a little.

“I wanna go touch it,” Hiro decided, nodding. Tadashi laughed a little.

“I wish we could, Hiro. We can’t leave the house though.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Tadashi sighed, frustrated. “I woke up, and there’s no doors leading out. I’ve tried breaking the windows but they won’t break. There aren’t any people around the house, or animals for that matter.”

“Then why’d you come here?”

“I didn’t. I woke up here. I don’t think I’ve ever been outside this house.” Hiro contemplated that for a few moments, still looking out at the trees, before he turned to Tadashi with a blinding smile.

“It’s okay, I’ve never been out of this house either.”

Tadashi laughed at that, but it wasn’t really funny. Even after all this time there was a small part of him that was bitter about having to stay inside all the time, about not having a say in where he could and couldn’t go. It was especially upsetting when he thought about Hiro. He wanted the doll to have every experience he could, he wanted to be able to do so much more with him. Hiro had no concept of wanting to leave, seemed content where he was most of the time, but Tadashi could see that he was growing restless. He switched between books without finishing them, he was more prone to pacing. He stared at Tadashi more often than he had before.

Tadashi had had the thought, one day, that Hiro looked like he was waiting for something to happen, but let the thought go when he couldn’t think of what that something could be.

No point in thinking about any of that now, though. No point being angry over something he couldn’t change. Here was Hiro, the best thing in his life, trying to cheer Tadashi up. He didn’t want the doll to think his efforts had been wasted. So he reached out, tousling his yarn hair, smiling as Hiro laughed. He cupped the doll’s face, stroking his cheeks with his thumbs, intending on shaking him a little bit because it made Hiro shriek with laughter.

He rubbed the fabric of Hiro’s face and paused.

Something was different.

“Tadashi?”

He ignored the question, frowning. He had chosen a softer fabric, smooth, but he’d always felt his fingers catch on the woven threads whenever he touched any part of Hiro. He’d always been able to see what little pattern there was whenever he was close enough to the doll to make it out. And as soft and smooth as it was, it was still stiff, not enough give in it to make it seem any more human than it already did. Which wasn’t a lot, Tadashi had always thought.

Leaning closer now, though, he could see that that wasn’t as true as it had been. The fabric had smoothed out considerably, the ridges of the woven strands more smooth than they’d ever been, less likely to catch against his fingers now. It was still the same colour, a soft pink, but when he pressed his thumbs a little harder under the glass eyes and pulled them away, he saw it. Very faintly, the colour had lightened before returning to its original shade. He gently pinched and noticed that the fabric had more give to it than it had before.

How had he not noticed any of this? How long had this change been happening? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t even know if Hiro was completely aware of it happening. Surely the doll would have said something if he had noticed.

It didn’t make sense.

“Tadashi? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, fighting to keep the waver out of his voice. “Just lost my train of thought for a minute.”

It didn’t make sense, but somehow the fabric of Hiro’s body was starting to become skin.

-

Tadashi spent the next few days watching Hiro closely while trying to not make it obvious that that’s what he was doing.

Watching the doll, aware that things were changing about him after he had touched the doll’s face, the difference was small but obvious. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed it before, really. Hiro could always walk easily enough, clumsy as he was, and he could get across emotion well enough with his face and pick up larger objects. It wasn’t like Hiro struggled with these tasks any more than someone else would, learning these things for the first time.

The fact was that he just wasn’t as flexible as Tadashi was. He didn’t have joints or muscle, and the fabric of his body could only give so much. Tadashi had made sure that Hiro would be able to bend his arms and legs well enough, but he was still stiff. His smiles were bright and full of life, but he couldn’t make it wider than his mouth, the same with a frown or a pout, the latter of which Tadashi found endearing even if he wasn’t entirely sure how Hiro managed it. He had trouble bending at the waist if he had to go too far down. He had trouble picking up smaller objects, the fabric too smooth, no grip to keep the object in his hands.

The stiffness was still there; he supposed that Hiro would always be stiff as long as he was stuffed with cotton as he was. He was still stiff, but there were still changes. He could smile wider, his grin stretching the fabric—skin—of his cheeks. He thought maybe he would have gotten crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, if the eyes weren’t made of glass and unable to move. He could pick things up easier. Tadashi had grabbed his hands once, running his nails down the palms to make Hiro laugh, and had the same lines he could find on his own palms. He could bend further, move a little faster on his feet now.

Tadashi just wasn’t sure why any of these changes were happening in the first place.

Moving, talking, being able to see, that was fine in the realm of context. The spell had been to bring a doll to life, and that’s what happened. It had given Hiro sentience, free will, the ability to do some of the things Tadashi was capable of. It was only supposed to bring the doll to life, though, not turn him human. He wasn’t sure how it was managing it, or if it even would turn him all the way human. If it was turning the fabric of Hiro’s body into flesh, where would it stop? Where could it stop? He wasn’t sure. He didn’t even know how it was happening in the first place.

He was washing his hands in the bathroom, Hiro most likely waiting patiently outside, when he suddenly thought of the blood he had dripped into the cotton when he had first made Hiro. His hands slowed, then stopped completely, and he stared at the steam rising while he thought of it. His blood had been so red against the white of the cotton, and it had been absorbed to quickly and completely. Like the cotton had eaten it, he remembered having thought, staring at the faint pink stains left behind. He remembered feeling vaguely unsettled, watching the cotton absorb the blood, stuffing it in the doll so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

The blood.

Did the blood have anything to do with this? It had been such a small amount, but he couldn’t think of what else it could be.

He could feel it again, that bubble of knowledge rising to the surface. The same feeling he had gotten when he had found Hiro in the sewing room those weeks ago. He’d been so close to realizing something, he was close to that realization again now. Like looking through a dirty window, the shape of something clear but not the details. If he could just concentrate just a little harder…

The idea of concentrating on it flew out the window when he heard a piercing shriek come from outside the door.

He threw himself at the door, fumbling for the knob and falling through it when he managed to get it open. Catching himself on his hands and knees, Tadashi found himself more or less level with Hiro on the floor. Hiro who was clutching his face, curled into a ball on the floor, his head thrown back while he screamed. He scrambled forward, lurching forward and grabbing Hiro’s arms, trying to pull them away to see what was wrong. He stopped pulling when Hiro’s screams somehow got louder.

“Hiro! Hiro, what’s wrong?!”

“My eyes!” he screeched, hunching forward to try and get Tadashi to let go. “They, they’re… it…” He couldn’t finish his sentence, and instead began to scream again.

“Hiro, please—“ And here he started trying to pull away Hiro’s hands again, trying to see what was wrong, trying to figure out what was hurting him. “Please, I need to see what’s wrong—“

“No!” Hiro shrieked, starting to move violently, trying to get away from Tadashi as best he could.

“Hiro!” He didn’t want to snap at Hiro, he really didn’t. It was obvious Hiro was in pain, and this was the first time the doll had ever experienced pain in his short life. He was being stubborn though, and Tadashi had no way of knowing how to help, or even what was happening, unless Hiro moved his hands. “Hiro, I’m sorry,” he muttered, starting to wrestle with him. If Hiro was going to thrash around like this, he couldn’t be gentle about it.

It took some effort—Hiro was stronger than he would have given credit for—but he managed to get Hiro into a still position. He had the doll in his lap, back to front, his two hands pinned in one of Tadashi’s own. Hiro was still howling and screaming, partly in frustration but mostly in pain, when Tadashi used his free hand to pull his head back to see what the problem was.

He didn’t see what could be wrong at first, but when he did his blood ran cold.

Hiro’s eyes were bulging out of his face. Where once the glass eyes had rested almost flat against his face, now they curved upward, rounded almost like a real eye would be. He slid his hand forward, toward the skin around the eyes, God the skin he still couldn’t believe it was skin. He didn’t believe what he was feeling at first, but twisting Hiro’s head to the side and leaning closer confirmed what he had felt. The edges of the glass eyes had sunk under the skin, imbedded into Hiro’s face now instead of held on with glue.

No wonder Hiro was screaming like he was. Tadashi would have been screaming just as loudly if it had been him.

“Okay,” he said softly, letting go of Hiro’s hands and head, watching as the doll immediately curled back into himself. “Okay, it’s okay,” he reassured, wrapping his arms around Hiro, determined to sit through the screaming until Hiro felt better.

Hiro didn’t have a throat to scream raw, and he didn’t have lungs that would ache after a while. The screams went on and on, never changing pitch or pace, until Tadashi thought he would go mad. Still he held Hiro though, unsure what was going on, unsure if Hiro was still in pain or just in shock at this point. Unsure but still wanting to help how he could. So when the screaming stopped, it stopped very suddenly. The silence rang in Tadashi’s ears as he pulled Hiro away from him, just enough to be able to look him in the eyes.

The eyes that looked around the room. Hiro was moving his eyes, _moving_ them, the pupils darting around. Tadashi felt a shiver slowly creep its way up his spine watching it. Hiro had definitely not been able to do that before, and like the skin Tadashi had no idea why it was happening in the first place.

“Hiro?” He hated how small his voice was, but was relieved when Hiro stopped darting his eyes around and focused them on him. “Hiro, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Hiro replied, leaning forward to bury his face in Tadashi’s neck. Two thoughts went through Tadashi’s head at rapid pace.

 _He’s lying,_ was the first thought he had.

 _Ten drops of blood,_ was the second, as he numbly wrapped his arms around Hiro. _Is ten drops of blood really enough to cause all of this?_

He thought back to his almost-realization in the bathroom, and while he couldn’t grasp the thought anymore, he still suddenly felt afraid.

-

A tug on his arm woke him up the next night.

He blinked, confused and silent, looking around the room. The light from the moon was spilling into the room, bright and clear, casting away the shadows. Turning his head to the side showed that Hiro wasn’t in bed again, the sheets rumpled and tossed aside. He let out a soft sound, dismayed at the sight.

 _What now?_ he wondered, turning his head to the other side. Except Hiro was on the other side, off the bed and crouched on the floor. He could only see the top of his head at this angle, Hiro’s face pointed down towards Tadashi’s arm. Tadashi’s arm, that he was holding in a vice grip it felt like.

Something deep inside Tadashi tensed up, and he tried to twitch his arm away from the doll. Hiro just made a hungry noise though, tightening his grip and hunching over further. A more forceful twitch, more of a tug now, only got him a repeat of the same noise. He had seen more though, seen that it was Hiro’s mouth on his arm, seen the glitter of something metal coming out of the flesh. Seeing those things brought him the sensation of a tugging in his arm, as well.

Hiro had something in his arm and he was very forcibly sucking something out.

“Hiro?” he asked, his voice loud and panicked. Hiro jerked his head away, his own face looking as panicked as Tadashi felt when he faced him.

The moonlight hid _nothing_.

Tadashi wished that it did.

The bottom part of Hiro’s face was soaked in blood. It was nothing but a large, dark stain in his mouth and on his chin in the night, but it was obvious what it was to Tadashi. His glass eyes glittered in the moonlight, the dark pupils darting across Tadashi’s face, trying to gauge a reaction. His shoulders were heaving like he was trying to take deep breaths.

All of this was secondary to Tadashi, though, compared to the needles coming out of Hiro’s mouth. Dozens of them, all glittering and dripping more blood into Hiro’s mouth. They lined the top and bottom of his mouth, like makeshift teeth, unevenly spaced and protruding so far that Hiro couldn’t close his mouth. He shuddered, reaching forward before jerking his hand back, shuddering again.

“Hiro, what—“ he started but couldn’t finish, because he knew. Sewing needles, the sewing needles. That small box of them, the one that had struck him odd. When Hiro had snuck out of the room and pulled out that drawer, he had gotten needles out of the box. He’d gotten the needles and put them in his own mouth, but God, why? Why would he do that, why would he be _drinking Tadashi’s blood_?

Hiro let go of Tadashi’s arm like it burned him, and Tadashi watched with a horrified fascination as the needles retracted back into Hiro’s head. Watched silently as they slid upward and downward, disappearing, the blood that had covered them oozing and dripping off.

“Please don’t freak out,” Hiro begged, reaching out his hands like he wanted to touch Tadashi.

It was too late though. The inside of Tadashi’s head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton, and Hiro’s plea sounded muffled and far off. He jerked his arm back when it was free, and the movement felt both too quick and like it was moving through syrup. He could feel his chest expanding, full of air, and he realized distantly that he was either about to scream or vomit.

“Tadashi,” still sounding muffled and distant, Hiro started to climb back onto the bed to get closer to him, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t handle that. A short, high scream burst out of his throat and he scrambled off the bed, keeping as far from the doll as he could manage, and rushed towards the bathroom. He panicked more when he slammed the door, because it didn’t have a lock, and what if Hiro tried to get in this time? The bathroom was small, it would be harder to avoid the doll.

He ran to and hunched over the toilet, convinced he would vomit. Instead of vomiting though he sat and shivered and sobbed. He was in shock, he thought distantly, unsure how he knew this but positive of it nonetheless. All he could think of was Hiro, small sweet Hiro, his face covered in Tadashi’s blood. He kept seeing the needles in his mouth retracting, the blood being scraped off them and dripping down.

His moan came thick and choked sounding out of his throat.

His mind kept circling back to the blood. He remembered wondering if the ten drops of blood he had dripped into the cotton had really been enough to cause these changes in Hiro. He had his answer now, apparently. How long had the doll been doing this? Since that day in the sewing room? God, had he been doing this every night? He remembered the day his arm had been numb, how the next day he hadn’t been able to move from bed. Had Hiro taken too much blood, then? It would explain his apology, yes it would.

He brought a shaking hand up to his arm, feeling around where Hiro’s mouth had been. He could feel leftover blood, turning tacky and dry on his skin, and he moaned again, sick to his stomach. He couldn’t feel any puncture marks, though. He moved his fingers across his skin quicker, startled by this, but still nothing. There was no light in the bathroom, but he realized slowly that he would find the same thing even with light.

Hiro’s makeshift needle teeth hadn’t left a single mark on his skin.

He drew his arms close to himself, curling into as tight of a ball as he could while still leaning against the toilet. In case he really did throw up, he told himself, but really he was afraid of laying down and passing out. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but eventually his panicked sobs tapered off into silent crying, and he could hear gentle knocking on the door. He wondered how long it had been going on.

“Tadashi?” Hiro’s voice was so soft, Tadashi could barely make it out. “Tadashi, are you okay?” Hiro waited for a few moments, but Tadashi didn’t answer him. Finally, “I’m sorry Tadashi. I didn’t wanna upset you like this.”

 _You wanted to drink my blood though?_ Tadashi thought, but still he didn’t say anything.

“Please, Tadashi,” Hiro said, voice sounding close to tears. Tadashi wondered how long it would be before Hiro could cry, if he would ever be able to. “Please, I’m sorry. I don’t know… Please come out.”

He didn’t want to. He wanted to stay in this bathroom forever, wanted to avoid having to look at Hiro again. He wasn’t sure how he could manage to look at the doll again, not without seeing his own blood all over Hiro’s face. He didn’t have a choice, though. He had to leave if he wanted to live. And he knew Hiro, knew how determined he could be, knew how much Hiro hated to be separated from him. Hiro would come into this room eventually if he didn’t leave it.

He wanted answers as well, and he couldn’t get them staying in here.

He started to force himself to take deep breaths, hoping it would calm him. It eventually started to work. He could slowly feel his hands tremble less, felt feeling come back to his legs that he hadn’t been aware wasn’t there. His head stopped pounding. He finally managed to stop crying, but he couldn’t stop his mouth from trembling, or his teeth from clicking together. He waited until he felt as stable as he figured he would get, and stood up and walked to the door.

Hiro jumped away from the door when he opened it, looking at Tadashi with a mixture of guilt and relief. Hiro rushed forward, his arms outstretched for a hug, but Tadashi caught him and pushed him back gently.

“Tadashi?” Hiro asked, a tremor to his voice, but Tadashi wasn’t listening. He was too busy looking at Hiro’s face. Hiro’s face, which showed no trace of the blood that had been there. Tadashi felt his mind go sideways, almost, before he snapped back to reality. Maybe Hiro had just wiped away the blood that had been leftover.

Maybe his body had absorbed what was left.

“We need to talk,” he said slowly, and Hiro looked nervous and upset, but he nodded.

Tadashi led them back to the bed, watching as Hiro climbed on and got comfortable. He walked around the bed instead of getting on it, reaching for the candle and lighting it. There was more than enough light in the room, from the moon shining right outside the window, but the sight of the small flickering flame gave him a small amount of comfort. He set it on the small table by the bed before turning and finally crawling onto the bed himself. He sat across from Hiro, a few feet away, crossing his legs and looking the doll in the eye.

“What were you doing?” he asked bluntly, watching Hiro flinch.

“I don’t know,” Hiro replied meekly. “I really don’t,” Hiro fumbled, seeing Tadashi’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “It’s just, it’s something I have to do. I can’t _not,_ I can’t, I’ve tried but I have to.”

“Like lying to me about the sewing needles?”

“I thought you’d be mad…”

“Mad?” Tadashi asked incredulously. “Hiro, this goes beyond being mad. You were _drinking my blood._ ” When Hiro said nothing to this Tadashi scrubbed his face with his hands. He shot a quick look at his arm, confirming that while there was still dried blood on it, there were no puncture marks. If it weren’t for the blood and the look of guilt still on Hiro’s face, he could have convinced himself he had dreamed the whole thing up. Maybe that would have been preferable. “Fine. Why are you doing it then?”

“It’s making me like you,” Hiro breathed, his face turning from guilt to wonder. He looked at Tadashi, his eyes very round and his mouth partly open, and all Tadashi could think about were the needles hiding in there. “It’s turning me human, I think.”

“What?” Tadashi asked softly. He watched Hiro’s hands wave around in a frenzy as the words poured out.

“It’s, I feel more like you do,” Hiro explained, running his fingers along his arm, looking fascinated. “My eyes, what happened, they changed too. They move like yours do. Something, there’s something changing inside me too. I can feel it.” He put his hands on his chest as he said this, looking at Tadashi imploringly, silently begging for understanding. “Whatever’s happening, it’s making me human. Just like I wanted! I’ll be human too!”

“Hiro, you can’t do that again.” Tadashi almost, _almost_ took back his words when he saw Hiro’s face crumple into confused devastation. Almost, before he remembered watching the needles slide out of his arm, remembered the black stain of blood on Hiro’s face. He remembered watching blood drip off of those needle teeth and hardened his heart against Hiro’s next words that came out hurt and warbled.

“Why not?”

 _Because it scares me,_ he thought but didn’t say. He never wanted to see anything like that again, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Hiro that he had been terrified. He couldn’t bring himself to hurt him like that, no matter what had happened.

“Because it’s a bad thing,” he said instead, keeping his voice steady, ignoring Hiro’s clenched fists and twisted mouth.

“It’s making me human though!” he cried out. “It’s making me like you, so I won’t have to watch you die!”

Tadashi’s heart broke at that. He couldn’t stay hard, not when Hiro was as close to crying as he ever could get. He remembered first telling Hiro about death, how frightened he had been at the thought of losing Tadashi, and felt his heart break more. Of course this was about being with Tadashi, of course it was about not wanting Tadashi to go somewhere he couldn’t. He opened his arms finally, and Hiro flew into them, burying himself as far into Tadashi’s chest as he could get.

“There has to be a better way,” Tadashi told him, rubbing his cheek against Hiro’s yarn hair. He found a small measure of comfort when he found that that at least hadn’t changed yet. “We’ll look for it together, okay? No more of this though.”

“But—“

“Please,” Tadashi interrupted. “Please, for me. No more.” Hiro trembled in his arms, didn’t stop even when Tadashi held him closer.

“Okay.” It was just a whisper against his chest, and it sounded unhappy and reluctant, but he would take what he could get.

-

Two days later and Tadashi could already see the strain Hiro was under.

They’d spent those days going through any book in the library that looked like it could hold an answer. Which, Tadashi would admit to himself, there weren’t a lot of. He’d gone through the original book first, the one with the spell. He’d flipped through the pages, reading closely but without much hope. He’d already read through it, and nothing had stood out to him that could help with this situation. Still he’d tried, hopeful that maybe he had overlooked something.

He hadn’t, it turned out, and he had thrown the book aside in frustration. Hiro had glanced up from the book he’d idly been going through, looking curious but staying silent.

“Anything in that book?” he’d asked instead of explaining.

“No,” Hiro had replied curtly. Tadashi had sighed; Hiro was silently but adamantly against finding an alternative to the situation. He didn’t see the point, Tadashi figured. Why look for something else when they had already found something that worked? Tadashi wasn’t quite sure how to explain how much it scared him. How convinced he was that it wouldn’t lead to anything good in the end.

Still, he flipped dutifully through the books he was handed, and he did seem to actually be looking for something. Tadashi would take it and not ask for more.

Two days had gone by though and Hiro was visibly exhausted from it. He seemed smaller, sunken into himself. His skin, and Tadashi still balked thinking this, was paler than it had been, almost chalky. He had less energy than he had ever had before, reduced to slumping on the floor and passively flipping through pages. He was unresponsive for the most part and snappish and grumpy when he wasn’t.

Tadashi wasn’t fairing much better. He hadn’t been allowing Hiro into the bedroom when he went to sleep after the incident, but even so he was sleeping restlessly, jerking himself awake every couple hours. Scared that the next time he opened his eyes, Hiro would be hunched over him again, and he’d have to watch those needles slide back into his mouth. He wasn’t grumpy, not exactly, but he was tired. Tired of having to wake himself up, tired of being scared of Hiro, tired of the dreams where Hiro sunk those needles into his neck instead of his arm.

Hiro had been staring at him the last hour, completely ignoring the book in his lap. He followed Tadashi with his eyes every time Tadashi got up to do something, anything. He didn’t move from his spot, or try to talk, but he kept staring at him. Tadashi was unnerved, but he was tired, and staring was harmless. As long as it stayed at staring things would be fine.

“Anything in that book?” Tadashi asked for what felt like the millionth time, sighing when Hiro mutely shook his head. He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking out the window at the fading light of the sun. “Okay,” he said, huffing out a breath. “I’m going to go to bed, okay?” Hiro didn’t respond, he kept staring at Tadashi like he hadn’t heard a single word he’d said. “Stay out here.” With that said he started to make his way to the bedroom, too tired to try and make a wide berth around Hiro when he walked past.

Hiro was on him before he could blink.

Tadashi lost his balance trying to fight Hiro off of him, falling backwards with Hiro on top. Hiro was trying to get as close to any part of Tadashi he could, and Tadashi could feel his stomach sink as he watched the needles slowly come out. He put his hand on the doll’s head, pushing him away, trying to push him off. Hiro was fighting the fight of the desperate though, unwilling to be thrown off of his goal.

“Hiro!” he cried out through gritted teeth, trying not to lose his grip, struggling to get off his back. Hiro lunged forward, putting all of his strength into it and knocking Tadashi back onto his back.

“I’m so thirsty, Tadashi,” Hiro groaned. Each word was accompanied by clicking, the needles hitting each other as he spoke. Tadashi choked back a scream.

“You don’t have to do this,” he tried to reason, pushing Hiro away best as he could, trying to keep out of reach of his mouth. “I’m sure we’re close to finding another way—“

“ _There is no other way,_ ” Hiro growled, opening his mouth wide and preparing for another lunge. Tadashi’s heart sunk; he had found out too late, and now even if they had found another way, it was too late for Hiro.

With a cry of effort, Tadashi _shoved_ with every ounce of strength he had, finally getting Hiro off of him. He immediately lurched to his feet, rushing to the bedroom. He managed to get the door open before Hiro was on him again, tackling him at the waist. Tadashi twisted his body and saw Hiro rear his head back, preparing to bite. He reached out quickly, grabbing a handful of Hiro’s yarn hair. Hiro screeched in pain when Tadashi pulled as hard as he could, letting go of his hold on Tadashi’s body momentarily. Not letting go of Hiro’s hair, he grabbed at Hiro’s shirt with the other hand and stood up before hurling Hiro into the room.

Hiro’s body crashed into the desk before tumbling to the floor. Tadashi stood still just long enough to make sure Hiro wasn’t going to stand right back up, but the doll stayed on the floor, crying out in pain and looking dazed. Assured that Hiro wouldn’t follow him right away, he turned on his heel and ran from the room. He knew exactly where to go, the only place he had never shown Hiro before.

The cellar.

He ran into the library, afraid that he wouldn’t remember where it was, that he would still be stuck running in this room when Hiro eventually came after him. His feet unerringly took him to the spot, though, and he fell to his knees. There was a brief moment of panic before he found the latch and pulled the trap door up as quickly as he could. It still fought him, having only been used once, but he was much more desperate than he had been that time. He got it open quickly and stepped into that pitch black space. Stepping down the stairs as quietly as he could, he let the door fall shut and enclose him into the small room. He jumped off the staircase rather than go the rest of the way down, not wanting to make too much noise. He rushed to the closest corner, curling into it and trying to calm his breathing.

A minute later, not even that most likely, Tadashi could hear soft thumping footsteps above him.

“ _—dashi? Where d… go?”_ He could only faintly hear Hiro’s voice, which reassured him that sound didn’t travel through the trap door well at all when it was closed. “ _Tada--!”_

He didn’t answer, leaning his head back against the wall and looking out into empty darkness.

He wasn’t sure how long he spent down there. Time had little meaning in the house; he understood the concept of hours and days and weeks and months, but had no idea how many days in a week there were or weeks in a month. There were no clocks in the house, and Tadashi mostly guessed at how much time was passing by where the sun was in the sky. There was no sun down here, no light at all, and time quickly turned watery for him.

He thought about those long days when he had first woken up in this house, alone and trapped with nothing but the sound of his voice to keep him company. He remembered thinking, knowing, that he was slowly going insane from the isolation. He remembered begging to anyone that would listen to either escape from the house or find a friend somehow.

He thought about the book, and the spell to make a living doll, and his suspicion but also his hope. It had all been so convenient, but what could he have done? He had been losing his mind, grieving over a life he had probably never had, desperate for anything other than himself to fill the house. What could he have done but try?

He had cried so hard into Hiro’s chest when he thought it hadn’t worked. He’d been tired and numb and heartbroken, having put so much effort and hope into the project. It had worked though, hadn’t it? It had just taken Hiro a little while to warm up.

He thought of sewing needles piercing through Hiro’s mouth as they came out and wondered if he would have done it all over again, knowing what he did now.

His mind flashed to that snowy day, standing on the desk with Hiro. He’d been so proud of the feet he had made the doll, thought it was so cute that Hiro had to stand on the tips of his new toes to see out the window. Hiro had looked so awed by the sight of the falling snow, and Tadashi had wanted so badly to take him out to it, to watch Hiro play in it and play in it with him. Whatever Hiro would have wanted, he would have given it. He remembered the bright smile Hiro had worn before Tadashi had touched him and discovered skin.

 _I would,_ he thought, starting to cry. _God help me, I would._

He closed his eyes and tried to come to terms with his death.

-

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he finally jerked awake.

He was immediately disoriented by the complete darkness around him before the memories rushed back to him. He immediately started listening for noise, but the silence was complete. Hiro didn’t sound like he was anywhere close to him. He could be in another part of the house, tearing things apart to try and find him. Or he could just be sitting in the living area, waiting for Tadashi to come out himself. He had to eat, after all, drink water and go to the bathroom. Hiro might just be playing the waiting game now.

Tadashi had no intention of leaving the cellar of his own free will though.

Keeping his ears trained for sound from above, he wondered if Hiro was aware that trying to become human by drinking Tadashi’s blood would most likely lead to Tadashi’s death. He didn’t think so. Hiro was doing this so he could be human with Tadashi, so he wouldn’t have to live without him. What was the point in it if he knew that Tadashi would die from this? No, he didn’t think Hiro was aware.

Time passed, oblivious and uncaring of his predicament, before he finally heard a noise.

A scraping noise across the floor, in the cellar with him.

His heart stopped beating for a second and his blood ran cold. He stopped breathing completely, suddenly petrified. Even knowing he would do the same again, even knowing he loved Hiro no matter what, he had yet to make peace with the idea of his death. He wasn’t ready, didn’t think he ever would be. He had wanted more time with the doll, time that wasn’t spent running and fearing him.

“I thought you had been lying about a way out of the house,” Hiro finally said. Tadashi couldn’t figure out where in the room he was, the darkness seeming to muffle the words. “Or that maybe you had found a way out in a panic. I panicked myself, when I thought that. I never wanted to drive you away.

“Then I remembered, way back at the beginning. Before I could talk or see, or even move. You talked a lot to me, not knowing I could hear you. You told me about yourself, about your books and your thoughts. You told me about this house, how you couldn’t break the windows, how things appeared while you slept.

“You told me about the cellar.”

Tadashi bit his lip on the sound that wanted to come out. He remembered now, that day before Hiro had first moved his head. He had babbled to him about inane things, whatever had passed through his mind. He had told him about the cellar, saying it was where he had found the book that had led to his creation. He’d forgotten about that, and apparently so had Hiro. Until now, that is.

“I remembered the cellar and thought, why, that’s a perfect place to hide. Especially since you never got around to showing me where it was. At least you had the thought to tell me it was in the library. I’ll tell you, I had a hard time finding this room. I did though. I found it, and I found you too.”

Hiro paused for a moment.

“I just don’t understand _why_ you hid from me. Why you fought me, or threw me. That really hurt! It doesn’t make sense. I’m not hurting you, not really. I took too much blood those first two times, but I’ve been so careful since. I can still be careful. It doesn’t even have to hurt.

“And we can be together this way Tadashi! Neither of us will have to live without the other. You told me, you said that you were going crazy before you made me. I’d go crazy without you, Tadashi. I really would. This solves all that though! We’ll be human together, and we’ll live and die together! Isn’t that a good thing?”

It would be, except Tadashi was increasingly sure that Hiro becoming human would lead to his own death. He stayed silent, though, not wanting to give away where he was. He was still close to the staircase, maybe if he was quiet enough he could get close and make a break for it. Close the door on the doll, block it off with something heavy. Maybe a bookcase… He slowly started to creep his way to the stairs.

“You’ve gone and made this messy though,” Hiro sighed. Tadashi wasn’t sure if it was just him being paranoid or not, but he sounded closer. He moved a little quicker towards the stairs. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, but you are. Look! Hiding in the dark like this! This’ll always be over us, you know.” He was so close to the stairs, just a couple more feet…

“I know where you are in here. You can’t run from me anymore.”

That was more than he could take. Heart in his throat, he took a running leap for the stairs. Before he could even touch the first step though, something hit the back of his head with a meaty _thwack_ and he was gone to the world once again.

-

Tadashi awoke slowly, feeling like he was being pulled from deep underwater. His head was throbbing in time with his heart beat. It made him feel sick to his stomach. His mouth was throbbing too, feeling empty and sore. He lifted his hands, wanting to clutch his head and his stomach, wanting to curl into a ball and go back to sleep. He lifted his hands but didn’t get them very far before they caught on something. He turned his head, grimacing, and found that they were tied to the bed in his room with torn strips of cloth. He blinked slowly, trying to comprehend what was going on.

He poked his tongue forward in his mouth and found that his teeth were gone.

That kick started the panic, and he began to struggle against the bonds around his wrists. He was still groggy though, groggy and in pain, and he could only struggle so much. He cried out when his head gave a particularly vicious throb.

“Tadashi!”

He froze at the voice. Memories were starting to trickle in, slowly, too slowly. He remembered throwing Hiro into the desk in this room, and hiding in the cellar. He remembered Hiro admonishing him for hiding from him, and trying to run up the stairs so he could trap Hiro in the cellar instead. His memories are blank after that though, and he suspects it has something to do with the pain in his head.

Hiro bounced onto the bed, crawling towards Tadashi before straddling his waist. Placing his hands on Tadashi’s chest, he leaned forward and grinned brightly down at him. Tadashi moans low in his throat when he sees his own teeth gleaming in Hiro’s mouth. There are bits of thread wrapped close to the top, and he suspects that the needles are imbedded inside them to help hold them inside his mouth.

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” Hiro gushes, wiggling on top of him. “I was afraid I hit you too hard down in the cellar, but I guess not. I’m sorry about the chair, by the way. I had to break it to get the leg off.” Tadashi glances around the room and finds the remains of the chair Hiro’s talking about. Thrown haphazardly on top of it is one of the legs, stained near the top with blood. “It was the heaviest and easiest thing I could get my hands on at such short notice.”

 _Why,_ Tadashi tries to ask, but all that comes out is a pained gurgle. Hiro cocks his head, looking confused, before he laughs a little.

“Oh! The teeth?” He laughs some more. “I’m sorry about that too, we’ll figure something out for you when this is over. It’s just, the needles were good for blood, right? I need more than that now, though, and the needles would break if I tried it with them. I needed teeth, and yours were the only ones in the house.”

Tadashi moans again, still feeling sick, before starting to struggle once more. If he could just focus past the pain, he could break free. Or at least knock Hiro off of him. Hiro didn’t seem deterred though, simply reaching forward to grab his bound wrists and shushing him.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Hiro muttered, and to his credit he really did look sorry. Tadashi wasn’t buying it, though, still trying to struggle. “I really am sorry, Tadashi, but you have to understand. It really will be okay.” Hiro smiled, and his stolen teeth seemed to mock Tadashi. “This is for the best.” Hiro stroked Tadashi’s hair out of his face, looking fond and loving, before pushing on Tadashi’s chin to expose his throat.

“Just try to breathe, okay?”

Tadashi managed to utter one single scream before Hiro’s teeth sunk into his flesh and tore.

-

-

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hiro is slowly pacing the isles of the library, counting out loud to ten over and over again.

He had woken up alone in this house weeks ago, he thought, unsure of how many days were in a week but knowing more than one had passed. Exploring had found him the bedroom he had awoken in along with a bathroom, a living room and kitchen, a sewing room, and this library. All those things but no way out. He’d spent that entire day and the next one, checking and double checking and triple checking that there was no hidden door along the walls. He’d broken the one chair in the house and tried to break all of the windows to no avail.

He’d woken up the next day and saw that the chair had been fixed in his sleep, and he had sat and stared at the chair for a long time.

He’d spent the rest of the time first screaming, then crying, then silently staring towards the windows. There were no animals outside, no people either. Just trees as far as the eye could see. He’d tried to read from the books in the library, but found he couldn’t concentrate on any of them. The silence started to wear on him eventually, so he had started to talk to himself. First it was supposing how he had gotten here in the first place, then it was fantasies about a possible rescue. Then it was pleading with no one for an escape, or someone to show up and stay with him.

Now it was just counting, over and over and over again.

He wandered the house, counting out loud to himself, and was distantly aware that he was losing his mind. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, though. What did it matter if he was going crazy? There was no one else around to judge him. He poked through everything he could find, counting to ten over and over, his voice monotonous and flat.

He had wandered into the library over an hour ago, holding the candle at his waist, watching the aisles pass by without really seeing them.

“Nine, ten… One, two…”

His foot caught on something and pitched him forward, and he landed with a startled grunt.

Pushing himself up, feeling his head clear for what felt like the first time in days, he crawled toward what had tripped him. Bringing the candle close, he saw a small dip in the floor, just large enough for him to fit his fingers into.

 _A trap door,_ he thought, feeling his heart skip a beat.

With shaking hands he set the candle down, turning and putting his fingers into the dip to pull the door open.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know if you guys liked this story! As always, I've got a Tumblr [here](http://www.glitterpukesoul.tumblr.com) where I'm basically just sitting in a trash bucket


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